Assessment and evaluation generate lots of questions from parents, board members, administrators, teachers, the community, and even students. The major education associations believe that teachers should possess strong assessment competencies: "Teachers should be skilled in using assessment results when making decisions about individual students, planning, teaching, developing curriculum, and improving schools." (AFT, NCME, & NEA, 1990). With high stakes testing, this requirement is even greater today than previously. Yet, many teachers and administrators receive little training. Thus, we hope that this section of the Toolkit will help teachers and administrators understand some important aspects of test scores and how to interpret them.
